A little over a decade ago Granta devoted an issue to new fiction by the twenty writers it judged to be the 'Best of Young American Novelists'. The writers then included Sherman Alexie, Edwidge Danticat, Jeffrey Eugenides, Jonathan Franzen and Lorrie Moore.

Who are their equivalents as writers of promise and achievement today? Over the course of a year, six judges read and deliberated and eventually chose twenty-one, all of them under the age of thirty-five.

Issue 97 of Granta magazine, 'Best of Young American Novelists 2', is devoted to their new work—a revealing insight into a new generation of American writing which shows, beside its talent, what bothers and inspires the imagination of modern America.